The battle has begun. Say what you want about King Bill, but after he made the tough call to have vampires who remained in Louisiana silver themselves during daylight hours – and brought Sookie chains to use on Eric when he could have easily let him burn in post-coital bliss – I think he’s worthy of the crown and Sookie’s trust. I can tell I’m liking him more and more because his hair is bothering me less and less.

So Marnie used Luis to help her escape (RIP, Katy and Katy’s iPad) and to deliver the message to Bill that Antonia Gavilán of Logroño had returned. It would have been smarter, of course, if she hadn’t announced that so she could have caught the vampires of 2011 off-guard like she’d done in 1610. But I suppose she knew that Bill would figure it out once she’d gone missing. Plus, we, the True Blood recappers, needed to know that we should now refer to her as Antonia instead of Marnie. Message received. Luis delivered the news to Bill with an exchange of bullets. Wounded, they both crawled for the Big Stake, which, I’m sure would have a fun nickname á la Big Joe and Big Carl on Cougar Town if Real Eric were king. Luis made Bill stake him, but not before he told him that it was the Resurrection that Antonia was plotting. Cue Bill’s meeting with his remaining sheriffs and the order to tell the vamps in their areas to get out of the state or silver themselves so their bodies would be too weak to succumb to Antonia’s spell to rise and walk into the sun. At first, it seemed like a bit of a pussy move, but if they weren’t going to be able to find Marnie before she formed a circle, it was brilliant. Truly.

Before we caught up with Sookie and Eric, we had to see Pam push Tara over the edge outside Merlotte’s so we’d understand why she’d side with Antonia. Pam couldn’t decide who to kill first, so she tried to attack Naomi while Tara watched. Tara struck Pam on the back of the head with a bottle and sent a piece of her rotting scalp flying. Awesome. Pam took Tara by the throat (a move she learned from Eric, no doubt), raised her, and would’ve suffocated her had she not seen camera flashes. “TMZ is offering 10K for real life vamp attack video,” one woman in the crowd said. Seeing Pam’s face, someone asked, “Are you sure she ain’t a zombie?” (“Holy crap, now there’s zombies?!”) Maybe in season 5, I wrote in my notes excitedly! “I… am not… a zombie,” Pam said. (“That’s exactly what a zombie would say. ‘I’m not a zombie.’”) She had to let Tara go. “It may be 10 minutes from now or 10 years, the moment you think you’re safe, I promise I will hunt you down and f—in’ shred you like confetti,” Pam told her. On shows like this, it can get tiresome watching characters cheat death when clearly, they could’ve been killed if only their attacker would actually attack instead of talk. But if you write a clever scene like that, we don’t mind. Naomi wanted Tara to return to New Orleans with her, and when Tara refused to, Naomi was willing to stay with her. But Tara made her leave: She’s not adding her to the list of lovers she’ll mourn. Apparently the Merlotte’s crowd had completely dispersed because no one was there to hear Tara wail.

NEXT: I wish we could take a timeout so Lafayette could babysit Mikey for an episode.